Flying monkey style like Wizard of Oz. Mosquitos were that bad last night, ridiculous. Tried the thermacell, and my son kept saying this stupid thing isn't working...asked him if he put the wafer in the front, and he said what wafer? He was fooling around with it for so long I figured he knew what he was doing. Oh well. Once we got it right and fired it up, it seemed to draw mor squitos in rather than repel them. My hands are a bit swollen today from all the blood sucking. I think we each have a quart last night.

Just so everyone knows, butane was in, regular wafer was in, it was glowing from the top showing it was on, and you could easily smell the repellent being "warmed-off", but the squitos were just thick as anything. To thermacell a credit, we didn't give a full 15 minutes to let it get full effect and we were outside not enclosed (but there was no wind at all, which contributed to the swarming not effect we experienced) so it wasn't a great experiment on the effectiveness of the thermacell. It was just annoying there were so many squitos and they were relentless. A slight wind might have helped, and it certainly would have made it more comfortable in the bug hats. My wife thought I had a rash on my back the next morning, but I told her it was just all the bites.

We were walking, not staying still, and that was our downfall. I was hoping with no wind that it would help a little even if we were walking, but to no avail. We were stationary for the first bit with no wafer, so that wasn't a fair judge. I have used it before while hunting from the blind and it seemed to work well for that, but the squitos are thicker this year due to all the water, and walking around as we have done in years past was just unbearable, even with nets over our heads. I know it wasn't a failure on thermacell's part, they aren't designed to be used while stalking.